Supper in the Stone Age
Written by Swathi Ram, Edited by Akhil Baidya
Winston Churchill once said that “a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” It seems as though those pants have finally been secured because the truth is out: and interestingly, one of the culprits was everyone’s favorite 60’s sitcom– The Flintstones. A recent study has shown that Stone Age humans had a largely plant-based diet, a discovery that may shake up how we view the development of agriculture. For so long, we have presumed that early peoples lived off of meat, an idea supported by the fact that Fred Flintstone, the bumbling cartoon dad, enjoyed brontosaurus ribs and big chunks of mammoth meat for breakfast.
Before the development of farming around 12,000 years ago, humans had mobile, hunter-gatherer lifestyles. However, until recently, little was known about their actual diet, due to the lack of well-preserved human remains from the Pleistocene period (the Ice Age).
A study published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution described the work of a group of scientists who examined human remains 13,000 to 15,000 years old, unearthed in Taforalt Cave in Morocco. They belonged to a group of hunter-gatherers called Iberomaurusians who lived in Northern Africa and buried their dead in the cave.
Using stable isotope analysis, a method that identifies which element’s isotopes are abundant in a compound, scientists inspected the bones and teeth of the Iberomaurusians. The amount of nitrogen and zinc isotopes in collagen and teeth enamel determined the amount of meat in the individual’s diet. Conversely, carbon isotopes illustrated whether the individual’s primary protein source was meat or fish.
In addition to their research with stable isotope analysis, scientists noticed that the teeth of these specific remains contained more cavities than typically seen in hunter-gatherer remains from this time period. This suggests a consumption of “fermentable starchy plants”, such as acorns, pine nuts, legumes, and wild cereals. The scientists concluded that the hunter-gatherer groups consumed a significant amount of plant matter.
However, this discovery only prompted more questions, including how and when neolithization developed. The term “neolithization” suggests the domestication of plants and animals, along with permanent living settlements (which are necessary in an agricultural society). Scientists have not found evidence that domestication began during the Ibermaurasian period, but they have noticed certain behavioral changes that may have evolved into sedentism, including evidence that the Ibermaurasians stored and selectively harvested some edible plant species.
Supper in the Stone Age was most definitely not brontosaurus ribs and big chunks of mammoth meat, and neither was breakfast. But then what exactly was it and how did the Ibermaurasians evolve into a species that grew their own food while inhabiting a permanent settlement? We know how it ended, with us, and we now know how it began, but what happened in between?
